8 ms·

iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet

435 points by alentodorov 5mo ago

toenail 5mo ago
Makes you wonder why this wasn't always possible.. I go to lots of events that have qr codes on their tickets, this will be useful
- loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
  Does just taking a pic of the QR code not work just as well?
  - jen20 5mo ago
    It does, but then it's buried in your photos instead of on the home screen.
    - vachina 5mo ago
      Most tickets don’t just come with a QR, it has other information like seating/metadata not in the QR that can only be captured in a photo.
      - loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
        Funny, when I take a picture of a ticket I can still see all those things.
      - berkeleyjunk 5mo ago
        Interesting. Do you have examples of such data or any pointers. I always take screenshots of the wallet pass and they seem to work fine.
  - bspammer 5mo ago
    You can double tap the lock button to open your wallet with all your passes. Also it automatically raises the brightness for QR passes to make it easier for readers. You could do the same thing with shortcuts I guess but using the first class feature is nice.
  - johanyc 5mo ago
    Apple wallet proactively shows your event pass when it's time. Much better than trying to find the photo from your camera roll
- vachina 5mo ago
  What is the difference between this and taking a picture/screenshot of the QR code?
  - rootusrootus 5mo ago
    QR code definitely in focus, lighting good, the screen will brighten automatically for maximum contrast, and it will be in an easy-to-find location (especially handy if location services knows you are near where you need the pass and suggests it automatically).
  - alt227 5mo ago
    Not much, it just allows you to save it in your wallet app instead of your photo app.
- gruez 5mo ago
  For whatever reason apple required passes to be digitally signed with an apple developer certificate. On the other hand a screenshot/pdf is "good enough" that they didn't bother fixing it.
  - alt227 5mo ago
    > For whatever reason apple required passes to be digitally signed with an apple developer certificate Apple uses every opportunity to try to increase developer and user lock in. This was no exception. I see this new move as begrudgingly opening the doors to all as not enough people were signing with Apple Developer Certificates.
    - jonathanstrange 5mo ago
      Unfortunately, they're not even good at it. Setting up a custom CI chain today as a brand-new member of the Apple Developer program, I found out that they have at least 9 different certificates to generate with no explanation which one you need on the page, and after I had generated one, downloaded it, and imported it into the keychain, the certificate was invalid. I additionally had to go to some cryptic looking page[1] and manually download the "right" in intermediary certificates. [1] https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/ https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/
- baby 5mo ago
  Coming from Android this was a big pain point
thewavelength 5mo ago
I need this without knowing before that I needed this. Makes me question why this wasn’t implemented years ago. Anyway, great.
ivanjermakov 5mo ago
Been using Wallet Creator for that matter. Free and no ads. https://apps.apple.com/app/id1486573384 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1486573384
- FinnKuhn 5mo ago
  Looks like someone got sherlocked [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked_as_a_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...
  - ruperthair 5mo ago
    You're right, but the blog author also seemed to be in the same position.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- johanyc 5mo ago
  I was thinking about this app. Couldn't recall the name
randusername 5mo ago
What a relief. My awful workaround was photos of all my membership barcodes labeled with a sharpie so that I can search "Gym" or "Library" or whatever to pull them up from OCR indexing.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  Why is that awful? Sounds simple to me.
  - nlawalker 5mo ago
    It's not awful on its own, but the alternative could be double-tapping the power button and having them immediately available on screen in a nice scroll UX along with everything else you consider to be in your "wallet". As someone who does roughly the same thing, the language used to describe the new capabilities isn't encouraging to me; I don't want to "add a pass", I want to "add a photo" and bypass all of this other complexity entirely.
- dewey 5mo ago
  There's many third party apps that can already create passes based on pictures. They are just adding that feature to the OS which is great of course but it has already been possible for a long time, except that there's one more step of downloading an app...but should still be quicker than searching your library every time.
- u_fucking_dork 5mo ago
  I usually just put things like that in an album
- basch 5mo ago
  Pass2U Wallet works great, but like many apps, it really should just be a feature to begin with. You can also make passes for other people and send them / share them. Looks like someone else recommended a competitor Pass4 Wallet as well, may need to go compare.
  - 5mo ago
flymasterv 5mo ago
I’ve always felt like Wallet is mostly a solution in search of a problem, but maybe more adoption will help? I don’t really believe that places that require membership cards are going to let users start creating their own, though.
- piva00 5mo ago
  Wallet is already plenty useful to me. Ticketing is a great use-case for it, I have flight tickets, concerts/events tickets, airport bus tickets, if it keeps expanding to integrate with even more tickets (my local public transportation system, the express train to the airport, more venues) it will only become more useful. Edit: also, all of my cards, I haven't used a physical card at POS terminals in years, they only get used on ATMs.
  - ghaff 5mo ago
    And, meanwhile, I want to have a physical card/printout I can use if something goes wrong with phone/watch. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the apps on my electronic devices but I also carry paper copies whenever I can because electronic stuff breaks in various ways.
    - piva00 5mo ago
      Me too, I wouldn't only rely on electronic devices for something as essential as paying. I still carry my cards in my physical wallet with me, it's just that I haven't had the need to use them in a very long time.
- SoKamil 5mo ago
  Having boarding passes in Wallet which also update real time is so nice. Same thing with other tickets for events.
  - brookst 5mo ago
    Yeah having gate, seat, time updating automatically is such a huge improvement for travel.
konschubert 5mo ago
I hope that we will soon have ways to change the tone of AI writing, I hate that all news articles now have that same AI voice.
intrasight 5mo ago
Could someone explain what a "pass" is in this context?
- biophysboy 5mo ago
  Entry ticket, basically. I went to Olympic Natl park recently and had the pass added to my Apple Wallet.
  - mystifyingpoi 5mo ago
    What's the difference here between adding the "custom pass" and just taking a photo of QR code? Just the fact that it is stored in Wallet instead of photos folder?
    - piperswe 5mo ago
      It's stored in Wallet so you can access it through the Wallet shortcut (double-press power button), when you open it the screen automatically brightens, and it's a perfectly clear QR code rather than a picture so it'll be easier to scan.
    - devnullbrain 5mo ago
      In addition to the sibling comment: I really dislike opening my Photos app in front of other people.
- Silamoth 5mo ago
  Basically anywhere you need to scan a QR code to get in, you can have a pass in Apple Wallet. I’ve never stored payment info in Apple Wallet. But every time I take a flight, I store my boarding pass in Apple Wallet. It’s than printing a physical boarding pass, it automatically updates metadata (e.g., flight times, gates), and it’s nicer than just a picture. Previously, you could only add passes if the company supported it. So most airlines have Apple Wallet passes, but most gyms don’t. This update will allow you to create your own passes. Basically just storing the QR codes (and maybe some metadata?) in one easy-to-use place on your phone. I can imagine this being convenient for daily use so you don’t have to track a gym tag with a QR code and a library tag with a QR code, etc. Also nice for tickets to events.
DecoPerson 5mo ago
Been using Pass2U for this for years. Surely this was considered earlier within Apple. I wonder what changed that they decided to do this now.
- itopaloglu83 5mo ago
  Similarly I was using Pass4Wallet. https://apps.apple.com/mw/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423106610 https://apps.apple.com/mw/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423...
- alt227 5mo ago
  Probably someone famous and powerful saw somebody do it on an Android phone and complained to someone high up in Apple.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
throwuxiytayq 5mo ago
[dead]
lxgr 5mo ago
Finally! An option to override automatic (un)archival of passes is also desperately needed. Some passes just don’t expire based on time, and too many pass creators are too incompetent to put the correct time in even if they do. Airlines in particular are prone to things like using local time in a field expecting UTC, which has made boarding passes auto-archive hours before leaving for the airport for me…
- zimpenfish 5mo ago
  > An option to override automatic (un)archival of passes is also desperately needed. PREACH. If you buy an open return (any time within 30 days of outward), Avanti set the expiry on both wallet passes to be the outward day. Which means your "valid for 30 days" ticket disappears almost immediately. Absolute shambles.
  - gib444 5mo ago
    Probably intentional. Train companies do loads of shenanigans with tickets and pricing
- reaperducer 5mo ago
  Wallet → … → Expired → Edit → Select All → Eyeball (!) → Unhide. Doesn't help with the "automatic" part, but I try to remember to do this every few months.
  - lxgr 5mo ago
    This is for unhiding, but do you know of a way to do the reverse?
vrc 5mo ago
Does Wallet allow apps to interact with the meta-data of cards, and/or update them in any way? This could be interesting for insurance cards, in particular. Upload & verify status periodically with a prompt to update, for example.
mghackerlady 5mo ago
Finally, there's a website out there to do it but holy shit was it a pain
mosburger 5mo ago
IMO one of the cool things about Wallet is the notification that appears on the homescreen when you're in proximity of the venue or time of the event and automatically displays the pass when tapped. I wonder if "create your own" will be able to do that (I'm not sure how it would)?
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  Just enter the location and time in question as part of creating the pass?
  - maratc 5mo ago
    For one, the article doesn't suggest that this will indeed be allowed as a part of that process. OTOH: it's easy for a flight ticket pass (which has time and airport location) but not for a gym membership pass (time can be anything and the gym can have several locations.)
    - ceejayoz 5mo ago
      Location-based functionality like this is already widespread in iOS; I'd be surprised if it wasn't supported. Reminders and calendar events (and PassKit!) already have it, for example.
- basch 5mo ago
  I use Pass2U Wallet and set a location, if I end up at near Children's Museum or Community Center, my ID is ready.
- haritha-j 5mo ago
  That one's real fun if you happen to be near the train station a lot, and have an anytime return ticket.
  - IneffablePigeon 5mo ago
    Yeah I had to turn that off when I lived near the train station.
dschep 5mo ago
This is just parity with google wallet, right? AFAICT my library card in google wallet is just a generic card/pass type.
- creaturemachine 5mo ago
  Google wallet did this from day one.
  - croes 5mo ago
    That’s why Google can’t announce a new feature.
- johanyc 5mo ago
  > A few places where we still help, even after iOS 27 ships: > Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form. From the blog
- baby 5mo ago
  It’s crazy how many people refuse to use Android in the US
bilsbie 5mo ago
Pretty useful. I wish more places would allow this. My zoo membership makes you install their app just to enter.
ghaff 5mo ago
I'll have to see the workflow but I find it incredibly annoying to have tickets that you may or may not be able to put in the Wallet and maybe we'll send them to you a week before the event when you're traveling. Understand about airline checkins but keeping mental track of things like theater tickets or timed museum entries is really annoyinmg.
chuckadams 5mo ago
It's kind of nice that I can put my Safeway and Soopercard in there now, but that still means having to scan the barcode, and frankly it's less cumbersome to just hand my physical card to the cashier. The only store that seems to have figured out how to automatically add their card to NFC payments is Maverik gas stations.
- NetMageSCW 5mo ago
  Walgreens let’s you add your loyalty card and use both it and payment from Wallet.
- rootusrootus 5mo ago
  > my physical card Sure, if you carry the physical card. But that's exactly what I get from having it on the phone -- I don't want an inch-thick wallet from times of old, I want to carry as little as possible. I have a tiny magsafe wallet with ID, one physical credit card, and an airtag card. Everything else lives on the phone.
nottorp 5mo ago
I paid 0.99 for some 3rd party app to do that for me years ago. It still seems to work. And I'll still need it because I doubt I'll be switching to 26 or 27 any time soon. Edit: Pass2UWallet is the name of the app I'm using if anyone cares. I'm not getting a commission for that yadda yadda doo.
- darkwater 5mo ago
  TFA is from a developer that created an app to create passes in iOS (and Android)
  - nottorp 5mo ago
    Not the only app though :)
jonathanstrange 5mo ago
What is a "pass" in that context?
- sebtron 5mo ago
  I think it means a digital copy of a ticket or similar card.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
skiing_crawling 5mo ago
they do the most obvious, sorely missing feature after over a decade of stubbornness and it goes straight to the top of HN
cormorant 5mo ago
Who's to say the business that issued the ticket will accept your homemade imitation? with "adjustable styles, images, colors, and text fields"?
- 46493168 5mo ago
  Absolutely no one whose job it is to scan barcodes gets paid enough to give a single fuck about how that barcode was created
  - knollimar 5mo ago
    There's some places like railroads that I've seen care about this so that people don't share tickets (like monthly pass types)
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  I use Pass4Wallet for several loyalty/gym memberships. In my experience, if the code scans, the code scans.
- circuit10 5mo ago
  It works fine if scanned by a machine though (ticket gate, self checkout etc.) I've used a third party app for this for a UK weekly pass train ticket you could only buy physically, but if you buy it on a train rather than at a station they can't print you a ticket with a magnetic strip and they have to give you one with a barcode (technically an Aztec code), which you can then scan onto your phone and use at the gate. But I kept the original ticket with me too and would use that if a person asked to inspect it
maratc 5mo ago
Adding your own passes was possible before (I used websites to create passes on the phone; apps existed too) however that's been a hurdle. I wonder what the security implications of this would be. Could people snatch a QR code on my paper ticket to go to a Taylor Swift's concert instead of me?
- jjice 5mo ago
  I can't speak for all things, but I found that venues will often use like a rotating QR code or rely on NFC. I'm sure if this is something like a ticket for a concert, you'll just rely on the existing pass support from whatever service you're using because it'll require something more complex. The way I'm interpreting this is that it's a way to abstract stagnant QR or barcode passes for smaller businesses and libraries. We'll see at the WWDC though.
- mystifyingpoi 5mo ago
  > Could people snatch a QR code on my paper ticket That's a feature, not a bug. It means you can sell the ticket if you can't make it. Thankfully (/s) we have Ticketmaster with rolling codes now, so, no reselling.
  - maratc 5mo ago
    > It means you can sell the ticket This also means I can do it twice if I choose so.
- NetMageSCW 5mo ago
  How do they get your paper ticket?
  - maratc 5mo ago
    By using their smart glasses or 20x zoom camera to take a picture of it when I take it out of the pocket at a grocery line? Thieves could snatch my paper ticket from my hands before, but at least in that situation I would be aware of it.
sen 5mo ago
Now we just need the ability to add custom NFC/RFID passes in the Wallet app for workplace doors/lifts/etc.
- alehlopeh 5mo ago
  Accessgrid is a startup in this space.
- rootusrootus 5mo ago
  I would love to see that. No more forgetting the office RFID card
- pjc50 5mo ago
  "Clone this pass" as a service!
- thecatapps 5mo ago
  God I hope that's included. As silly as it sounds, having NFC inside passes require a custom entitlement/approval from Apple was my breaking point for ditching iOS development altogether. The form for requesting said entitlement was broken (at the time, at least), and I didn't understand why .pkpass files had to be signed at all - I still don't.
  - daheat 5mo ago
    Same here - Why are they gating the NFC? There could be a sprawling ecosystem, instead they stifle it !
jstanley 5mo ago
What is a "pass"?
- brad0 5mo ago
  A generic name for a collection of things used to gain access to something. That’s not really helping explain it, so here’s some examples: Airplane tickets, library membership barcode, sports tickets, loyalty cards for your local coffee shop, conference tickets, etc. Essentially anything with a barcode first and foremost. The website that this blog is about allows you to generate your own passes.
  - sebtron 5mo ago
    Can I use this feature to generate an airplane ticket? :P I think "create" is the confusing part. It should be "digitize" or something. Either this, or "pass" means something else here.
  - jstanley 5mo ago
    I literally don't get what this new feature is adding or why it would be part of an iPhone wallet. If you want to issue tickets is your wallet the most obvious place to do it from? Why would an airline issue tickets from an iPhone? Or, if this is just for storing tickets issued by other people, why does it benefit from going into the wallet app?
    - toast0 5mo ago
      This is for storing tickets issued by other people. It's handy because it provides an organizational tool. Airplane tickets are in wallet, concert tickets are in wallet. Maybe ferry passes and store discount ids should be too. And also because you get better results from scanning a regenerated 2d/3d barcode after decoding the original vs scanning a photo of the original.
petetnt 5mo ago
The Wallet Pass[0] and PassKit[1] documentations are some of the sparsest and cryptic documentations around filled with absolutely archaic flows that _need_ to be supported for proper integration. If this solves the need of ever having to deal with those features ever again. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/passkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/passkit
Liquid_Fire 5mo ago
> A few places where we still help, even after iOS 27 ships: > Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form. What does this actually mean? Google Wallet has had a button to add your own passes for many years. How is the feature described here different?
- tantalor 5mo ago
  Yep. Lots of things are supported: https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/12060038 https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/12060038 Anything with a bar code or QR code will work. It's not complicated.
  - baby 5mo ago
    I switched to Android for a year last year and moving back to iOS was really painful. A lot of things make so much more sense in Android. I really miss being able to manage notifications granularly directly from the notifications for example, or quickly copy/paste many previous things from my clipboard directly from the keyboard, but what I miss the most is the AI integration, using AI is so painful on iOS
    - _diyar 5mo ago
      What made you move back to iOS?
      - baby 5mo ago
        I have another list of issues with Android, but the killer was how good iOS battery and how good iPhones are as physical products. But I miss a lot of things on Android now too (like the folding screen)
    - adithyassekhar 5mo ago
      I made the mistake of switching to an iPhone 17 from an S24. The phone had a problem so I thought why not try the famous UX of iOS? I had issues but I found the solution. I barely look at notifications anymore, it’s useless, does not group by app, can’t take any actions from there. Even if you open the app, the notification remains, so it’s just clutter at this point. Clipboard does not exist. Chrome sometimes when opened, opens up the address bar and there is no close button, I need to navigate away from the page I was on, or refresh. So I switched to safari, good job google. The biggest annoyance would be the back button or rather the lack of it. Every app does it somewhere different. It could be a left swipe in some apps, a back button on top left, a tick box on top right. There is no mental model you can rely on. Then I realized I am using it wrong. iPhones were never made for people like you or me. We just wants to finish our work as soon as possible. We zoom through multiple apps and get things done. iOS is for toddlers/old people and technologically challenged crowd. We need to think like them. So I treat the notification shade just like other users, glance and ignore. No need to manage it or clear it. Clipboard are needed when you copy multiple things. That’s because you want to paste multiple things. You are trying to do too much at the same time. Think of the most “simplest” person you know, they wouldn’t do what you’re doing. So I stopped doing that. Back button was only an annoyance when I either used non-apple apps or do things fast. Again doing things fast is not what your simple friend would do. They would take time and each action, press, swipe would be deliberate, not careful yet confused. Basically stop trying to be a smart person while using an iPhone. You might be a wizard in front of a terminal. iOS is designed for a large and specific set of audience and I truly respect Apple for catering to them. Most corporations like Google or Microsoft will try to teach their users and make them something they are not. Apple accepts them as they are. This comment has a lot of grammar mistakes which I am frankly not going to fix. The apple keyboard is terrible to go in between words and sentences to edit them. But the target audience would never do it anyway and Apple proudly supports their decision by not improving the keyboard. I think that’s a noble thing to do.
resters 5mo ago
I thought this meant Apple was creating the ability for anyone to issue/sell passes/tickets through its wallet infrastructure. That would be much more significant.
kilian 5mo ago
The wallet app UI is the peak of Apple's 'single 20y/o in sf' design. Anyone that has multiple card from the same bank (because, say, you have a personal account and a shared account with your partner) has to do the "pick between the two identical looking top 20px of cards" dance every time they use Wallet to pay for something. It is mind-boggling that the current UI persists.
- yieldcrv 5mo ago
  long hold to re-arrange your rearrange what your default card is - but to the bottom of the stack - is dumb
  - bombcar 5mo ago
    Apple has my location at every moment of my life, from birth to natural death, and they can't switch the default card based on the store I'm in? Will wonders never cease.
    - HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
      It works aggressively in Walgreen's
  - red369 5mo ago
    This one seems harder to get right to me. The cards are stacked so that the card further down the screen is the top of the stack (the card overlap indicating which is in front of which). I would guess this was done because if you can only see part of the cards behind, seeing the top of the obscured card is more useful than seeing the bottom. I could be missing something, but where there is no perfect solution, I want to be slower to say the option they chose is dumb.
    - yieldcrv 5mo ago
      Appeal to authority fallacy
stavros 5mo ago
I feel like a broken record to be saying this again, but seeing Claude's writing everywhere grates. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but can we at least post articles that weren't so obviously Claude?
rafram 5mo ago
This is AI slop blogspam. Original article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-04/ios-27-features-apple-plans-to-let-users-build-their-own-passes-in-wallet-app https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-04/ios-27-fe...
- HelloUsername 5mo ago
  Perhaps comments can be moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48012532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48012532
- xnorswap 5mo ago
  You're getting downvoted, but it's unmistakably written by AI.
DrewADesign 5mo ago
While the author does mention the barriers to adoption, the premise— Apple was waiting for people to do something, but people weren’t doing it— subtly casts Apple as a passive entity in this scenario. The solution seems to be presented as Apple stepping in to make up for Developers’ inaction. If it’s been 14 years and there’s been very little adoption, this is clearly a UX problem. How many small venues or libraries have developers, let alone developers that do enough Apple-specific development work to have an Apple Developer account? In 14 years they couldn’t come up with an alternate solution? Maybe a less expensive administrative version of a developer account? It’s not users jobs to sell themselves on Apple’s products.
- seeeeebt 5mo ago
  Yes, what a bizarre framing! Surely it should read "It took 14 years for Apple to realise the problem was with them".
- dec0dedab0de 5mo ago
  What there really should be is a wallet equivalent of an ics file. It doesn't need to support everything, static images would be enough for most use cases. Advanced features could then require the current model. But that would require collaboration, and standards, which seem to have gone away as smart phones came in.
  - azinman2 5mo ago
    Apple has .pkpass
    - sheept 5mo ago
      As alluded to in the ancestor comment, signing the .pkpass requires an Apple developer account.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - lode 5mo ago
mihaaly 5mo ago
I think I'd be satisfied enough allowing me not to add credit card to the Apple Wallet, putting away the push from the prime place some way. Or not to have a huge promotion being in the first place when opening it with a 'Get' buttopn being the only one on it. Today's app makers do not respect users. See them as big milk-cow fan-base, that's it! So they can piss off, I don't care about them either!
latexr 5mo ago
Finally!¹ My biggest use case is not actually creating passes for services which don’t provide them, but being able to create passes without having to install a freaking app. FlixBus (I might be misremembering) is the only service I ever found which lets you pay with Apple Pay and add a pass to Wallet all from Safari. For airlines and other bus/train services I always have to install the app to do both. Maybe this will allow me to buy tickets on the web then make my own pass. ¹ Assuming I even update to iOS 27, though.
- vtbassmatt 5mo ago
  It feels wrong to say something nice about Ticketmaster, but you don't need their app to add concert tickets to Apple Wallet (at least at all the venues where I live). I strictly use their website because I don't trust them. I've never tried to pay with Apple Pay on ticketmaster.com, but I assume I could do that as well.
dec0dedab0de 5mo ago
This rules, I hope they don't botch it. All I need is the ability to save a custom image, maybe with an optional expiration date. Then I could add all my insurance cards and concert tickets that are not already compatible.
nunez 5mo ago
Damn; PassWallet just got Sherlocked.
- alt227 5mo ago
  Google wallet has done this from day one. If Apple had done the same these 3rd party apps would have never existed in the first place.
baby-yoda 5mo ago
Fingers crossed they'll finally add Code 39 barcode generation.
aczerepinski 5mo ago
As long as we're innovating, how about adding tap to pay to the physical apple cards?
- WorldMaker 5mo ago
  If you have an Apple Card they already assume that you have an iPhone to tap to pay with. Why pay for hardware in the card that duplicates hardware your phone already does better? (Better as in Phone tap to pay has an extra layer of security that card tap to pay does not. But also yes, cynically, better for Apple because Apple gets a small cut in Phone tap to pay to help pay for that extra layer of security.) Using an Apple Watch for tap to pay is really nice, for what it is worth.
  - aczerepinski 5mo ago
    Handing your phone to the guy working the gate at the parking lot is awkward. Will he need to hand it back and forth for face ID? Handing a credit card like everyone else does is better, but why is this heavy titanium card one of the few that doesn’t work on his tap reader as expected? I wear a garmin when I work out but otherwise want a mechanical watch with no tracking or distractions.
    - WorldMaker 5mo ago
      In the modern world, the guy working the gate at the parking lot should be handing you the reader and not care what thing you are swiping, inserting, or waving at it. I think Europe gets it. America is slowly catching up. But if you have to pass a card because some business still feels that they have to touch your cards in this age, the EMV chip on the titanium card is just fine. They should just insert the card after a second or two of wondering why it doesn't tap. If their reader only takes tap to pay, then their reader needs to placed in a more convenient place for you to tap things like your phone or able to be passed to you for you to do what you need to do to pay. No one should be physically handling my payment method anymore but me. It's not a great service to walk 20 feet away from me with my credit card just to make a payment at some hard to reach terminal. In fact it's a security risk for skimming and card stealing (and always has been).
alt227 5mo ago
Good to see Apple catching up with Google finally. Google wallet has had the abillity to scan tickets and create custom passes for years. This article frames it like Apple are coming to save the day from lazy developers, but in reality its Apple who have been sleeping on this while other competing services have offered it for some time now.
halflife 5mo ago
Will this work only with scannable codes? Or with NFC as well?
noio 5mo ago
15 years ago, a friend of mine built an app to do this — "Pass Creator" — then Apple yanked the functionality. He paid me to create the icon for it, which was my first paid graphic design job: https://www.noio.nl/2012/10/pass-creator-app-icon/ https://www.noio.nl/2012/10/pass-creator-app-icon/ Thanks Paul.. good times!
- Dependance 5mo ago
  Went through your site, and amazed to see you worked on Kingdom ? Loved that game a ton.
- AlOwain 5mo ago
  If not for anything, the icon looks good. Although it is not out yet, Garbage Country's art direction looks good :) wishlisted.
- hbn 5mo ago
  You should know, however you're laying out the header on your website, in Safari it renders your face comically stretched and giant. Both on desktop and iPhone.
- dwayne_dibley 5mo ago
  I miss this design ascetic.
isodev 5mo ago
Oh great, Apple is sherlocking yet another category of apps (and not to mention Apple always had a convoluted and gatekeepy approach to letting passes show up in the Wallet app) I guess there is no appetite for “antitrust” in the US right now.
- jjice 5mo ago
  There are many anittrust arguments that can be taken up against Apple, but I don't see how this is one of them. They're adding a feature to add a QR/bar code to the wallet app. It's a very minor feature. As for sherlocking, this is such a minor use case that I'm not sure why anyone (minus maybe the initial app developers) would be upset. As a user, I need one less app to do something (that I should've been able to do for years). It's not like they're stripping an ability away from developers to hide it behind their own gates.
seldomcomment 5mo ago
This reminds me of WalletWallet [1], posted few months ago on HN [2]. [1] https://walletwallet.alen.ro/ https://walletwallet.alen.ro/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345745
- jdhwosnhw 5mo ago
  That’s because, as the article explicitly states, this post is by walletwallet’s developer
  - seldomcomment 5mo ago
    can't believe I missed that...
- avs733 5mo ago
  Its a blog post from the WalletWallet team about the upcoming changes that have only been reported by Bloomberg news
dawnerd 5mo ago
And yet there's still credit cards that don't support Apple Wallet. Looking at you Citi Best Buy card...
ghaff 5mo ago
And literally (at least in the correct meaning of the term) I just spent 30 minutes trying to get a theater ticket into my wallet from my computer and was able to do so only after I switched to my phone. I'll make a printout anyway which would probably work if push came to shove in spite of what the email says. But I just don't love that you're fsckd if something happens to your phone. As I said in another message. I'll probably buy another phone sooner than I would have otherwise just so I have a reasonably contemporary packup.
odysseus 5mo ago
Apple needs to go a step beyond this and optionally automatically pick the best card to use based on your location to get the max cash back.
emsign 5mo ago
And thus the trap closes shut. Big money wants to control all your identities. This is basically it, it's the final stage. now all it takes is a government that stops obeying fundamental rights... oh wait!
testfoobar 5mo ago
Definitely need this - I have a grocery store app with an embedded QR code linked to my account for discounts at point of sale. Opening the app is slow - so I've screen shotted the QR code. I have to pull my pinned photos at checkout to scan the code. This is also slow - but less slow than opening the app. Looking forward to adding it to Apple wallet. As an aside, does the Jenny number still work at most stores?
janandonly 5mo ago
I am surprised nobody mentioned pass3wallet yet? https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423106610 https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423...
MagicMoonlight 5mo ago
Awesome, finally. I don’t know why they wait so long to add things.
jasonmp85 5mo ago
[dead]
divbzero 5mo ago
This is wonderful, I’ve been waiting for this to add a library card to Apple Wallet. I hope it will support linear barcodes too.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
nixpulvis 5mo ago
Imagine if they let us make and share apps too. The amount of creativity and innovation the App Store has stifled is surely enormous and downright sad.
auston 5mo ago
Built a version of this for companies that want to move keys to Apple Wallet: accessgrid.com
ornornor 5mo ago
Amazing Apple. Taking decades to release the most basic features that everyone has been asking for/missing ever since the underlying product came out. If they present that feature as “revolutionary”, I win the apple keynote bingo again.
imwillofficial 5mo ago
I really liked the obective tone and positive attitude of this article. Well worth the read.

435 points by alentodorov 5mo ago

Makes you wonder why this wasn't always possible.. I go to lots of events that have qr codes on their tickets, this will be useful

loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
Does just taking a pic of the QR code not work just as well?
- jen20 5mo ago
  It does, but then it's buried in your photos instead of on the home screen.
  - vachina 5mo ago
    Most tickets don’t just come with a QR, it has other information like seating/metadata not in the QR that can only be captured in a photo.
    - loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
      Funny, when I take a picture of a ticket I can still see all those things.
    - berkeleyjunk 5mo ago
      Interesting. Do you have examples of such data or any pointers. I always take screenshots of the wallet pass and they seem to work fine.
- bspammer 5mo ago
  You can double tap the lock button to open your wallet with all your passes. Also it automatically raises the brightness for QR passes to make it easier for readers. You could do the same thing with shortcuts I guess but using the first class feature is nice.
- johanyc 5mo ago
  Apple wallet proactively shows your event pass when it's time. Much better than trying to find the photo from your camera roll
vachina 5mo ago
What is the difference between this and taking a picture/screenshot of the QR code?
- rootusrootus 5mo ago
  QR code definitely in focus, lighting good, the screen will brighten automatically for maximum contrast, and it will be in an easy-to-find location (especially handy if location services knows you are near where you need the pass and suggests it automatically).
- alt227 5mo ago
  Not much, it just allows you to save it in your wallet app instead of your photo app.
gruez 5mo ago
For whatever reason apple required passes to be digitally signed with an apple developer certificate. On the other hand a screenshot/pdf is "good enough" that they didn't bother fixing it.
- alt227 5mo ago
  > For whatever reason apple required passes to be digitally signed with an apple developer certificate Apple uses every opportunity to try to increase developer and user lock in. This was no exception. I see this new move as begrudgingly opening the doors to all as not enough people were signing with Apple Developer Certificates.
  - jonathanstrange 5mo ago
    Unfortunately, they're not even good at it. Setting up a custom CI chain today as a brand-new member of the Apple Developer program, I found out that they have at least 9 different certificates to generate with no explanation which one you need on the page, and after I had generated one, downloaded it, and imported it into the keychain, the certificate was invalid. I additionally had to go to some cryptic looking page[1] and manually download the "right" in intermediary certificates. [1] https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/ https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/
baby 5mo ago
Coming from Android this was a big pain point

thewavelength 5mo ago

I need this without knowing before that I needed this. Makes me question why this wasn’t implemented years ago. Anyway, great.

ivanjermakov 5mo ago

Been using Wallet Creator for that matter. Free and no ads. https://apps.apple.com/app/id1486573384 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1486573384

FinnKuhn 5mo ago
Looks like someone got sherlocked [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked_as_a_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...
- ruperthair 5mo ago
  You're right, but the blog author also seemed to be in the same position.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
johanyc 5mo ago
I was thinking about this app. Couldn't recall the name

randusername 5mo ago

What a relief. My awful workaround was photos of all my membership barcodes labeled with a sharpie so that I can search "Gym" or "Library" or whatever to pull them up from OCR indexing.

SoftTalker 5mo ago
Why is that awful? Sounds simple to me.
- nlawalker 5mo ago
  It's not awful on its own, but the alternative could be double-tapping the power button and having them immediately available on screen in a nice scroll UX along with everything else you consider to be in your "wallet". As someone who does roughly the same thing, the language used to describe the new capabilities isn't encouraging to me; I don't want to "add a pass", I want to "add a photo" and bypass all of this other complexity entirely.
dewey 5mo ago
There's many third party apps that can already create passes based on pictures. They are just adding that feature to the OS which is great of course but it has already been possible for a long time, except that there's one more step of downloading an app...but should still be quicker than searching your library every time.
u_fucking_dork 5mo ago
I usually just put things like that in an album
basch 5mo ago
Pass2U Wallet works great, but like many apps, it really should just be a feature to begin with. You can also make passes for other people and send them / share them. Looks like someone else recommended a competitor Pass4 Wallet as well, may need to go compare.
- 5mo ago

flymasterv 5mo ago

I’ve always felt like Wallet is mostly a solution in search of a problem, but maybe more adoption will help? I don’t really believe that places that require membership cards are going to let users start creating their own, though.

piva00 5mo ago
Wallet is already plenty useful to me. Ticketing is a great use-case for it, I have flight tickets, concerts/events tickets, airport bus tickets, if it keeps expanding to integrate with even more tickets (my local public transportation system, the express train to the airport, more venues) it will only become more useful. Edit: also, all of my cards, I haven't used a physical card at POS terminals in years, they only get used on ATMs.
- ghaff 5mo ago
  And, meanwhile, I want to have a physical card/printout I can use if something goes wrong with phone/watch. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the apps on my electronic devices but I also carry paper copies whenever I can because electronic stuff breaks in various ways.
  - piva00 5mo ago
    Me too, I wouldn't only rely on electronic devices for something as essential as paying. I still carry my cards in my physical wallet with me, it's just that I haven't had the need to use them in a very long time.
SoKamil 5mo ago
Having boarding passes in Wallet which also update real time is so nice. Same thing with other tickets for events.
- brookst 5mo ago
  Yeah having gate, seat, time updating automatically is such a huge improvement for travel.

konschubert 5mo ago

I hope that we will soon have ways to change the tone of AI writing, I hate that all news articles now have that same AI voice.

intrasight 5mo ago

Could someone explain what a "pass" is in this context?

biophysboy 5mo ago
Entry ticket, basically. I went to Olympic Natl park recently and had the pass added to my Apple Wallet.
- mystifyingpoi 5mo ago
  What's the difference here between adding the "custom pass" and just taking a photo of QR code? Just the fact that it is stored in Wallet instead of photos folder?
  - piperswe 5mo ago
    It's stored in Wallet so you can access it through the Wallet shortcut (double-press power button), when you open it the screen automatically brightens, and it's a perfectly clear QR code rather than a picture so it'll be easier to scan.
  - devnullbrain 5mo ago
    In addition to the sibling comment: I really dislike opening my Photos app in front of other people.
Silamoth 5mo ago
Basically anywhere you need to scan a QR code to get in, you can have a pass in Apple Wallet. I’ve never stored payment info in Apple Wallet. But every time I take a flight, I store my boarding pass in Apple Wallet. It’s than printing a physical boarding pass, it automatically updates metadata (e.g., flight times, gates), and it’s nicer than just a picture. Previously, you could only add passes if the company supported it. So most airlines have Apple Wallet passes, but most gyms don’t. This update will allow you to create your own passes. Basically just storing the QR codes (and maybe some metadata?) in one easy-to-use place on your phone. I can imagine this being convenient for daily use so you don’t have to track a gym tag with a QR code and a library tag with a QR code, etc. Also nice for tickets to events.

DecoPerson 5mo ago

Been using Pass2U for this for years. Surely this was considered earlier within Apple. I wonder what changed that they decided to do this now.

itopaloglu83 5mo ago
Similarly I was using Pass4Wallet. https://apps.apple.com/mw/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423106610 https://apps.apple.com/mw/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423...
alt227 5mo ago
Probably someone famous and powerful saw somebody do it on an Android phone and complained to someone high up in Apple.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

throwuxiytayq 5mo ago

[dead]

lxgr 5mo ago

Finally! An option to override automatic (un)archival of passes is also desperately needed. Some passes just don’t expire based on time, and too many pass creators are too incompetent to put the correct time in even if they do. Airlines in particular are prone to things like using local time in a field expecting UTC, which has made boarding passes auto-archive hours before leaving for the airport for me…

zimpenfish 5mo ago
> An option to override automatic (un)archival of passes is also desperately needed. PREACH. If you buy an open return (any time within 30 days of outward), Avanti set the expiry on both wallet passes to be the outward day. Which means your "valid for 30 days" ticket disappears almost immediately. Absolute shambles.
- gib444 5mo ago
  Probably intentional. Train companies do loads of shenanigans with tickets and pricing
reaperducer 5mo ago
Wallet → … → Expired → Edit → Select All → Eyeball (!) → Unhide. Doesn't help with the "automatic" part, but I try to remember to do this every few months.
- lxgr 5mo ago
  This is for unhiding, but do you know of a way to do the reverse?

vrc 5mo ago

Does Wallet allow apps to interact with the meta-data of cards, and/or update them in any way? This could be interesting for insurance cards, in particular. Upload & verify status periodically with a prompt to update, for example.

mghackerlady 5mo ago

Finally, there's a website out there to do it but holy shit was it a pain

mosburger 5mo ago

IMO one of the cool things about Wallet is the notification that appears on the homescreen when you're in proximity of the venue or time of the event and automatically displays the pass when tapped. I wonder if "create your own" will be able to do that (I'm not sure how it would)?

ceejayoz 5mo ago
Just enter the location and time in question as part of creating the pass?
- maratc 5mo ago
  For one, the article doesn't suggest that this will indeed be allowed as a part of that process. OTOH: it's easy for a flight ticket pass (which has time and airport location) but not for a gym membership pass (time can be anything and the gym can have several locations.)
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Location-based functionality like this is already widespread in iOS; I'd be surprised if it wasn't supported. Reminders and calendar events (and PassKit!) already have it, for example.
basch 5mo ago
I use Pass2U Wallet and set a location, if I end up at near Children's Museum or Community Center, my ID is ready.
haritha-j 5mo ago
That one's real fun if you happen to be near the train station a lot, and have an anytime return ticket.
- IneffablePigeon 5mo ago
  Yeah I had to turn that off when I lived near the train station.

dschep 5mo ago

This is just parity with google wallet, right? AFAICT my library card in google wallet is just a generic card/pass type.

creaturemachine 5mo ago
Google wallet did this from day one.
- croes 5mo ago
  That’s why Google can’t announce a new feature.
johanyc 5mo ago
> A few places where we still help, even after iOS 27 ships: > Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form. From the blog
baby 5mo ago
It’s crazy how many people refuse to use Android in the US

bilsbie 5mo ago

Pretty useful. I wish more places would allow this. My zoo membership makes you install their app just to enter.

ghaff 5mo ago

I'll have to see the workflow but I find it incredibly annoying to have tickets that you may or may not be able to put in the Wallet and maybe we'll send them to you a week before the event when you're traveling. Understand about airline checkins but keeping mental track of things like theater tickets or timed museum entries is really annoyinmg.

chuckadams 5mo ago

It's kind of nice that I can put my Safeway and Soopercard in there now, but that still means having to scan the barcode, and frankly it's less cumbersome to just hand my physical card to the cashier. The only store that seems to have figured out how to automatically add their card to NFC payments is Maverik gas stations.

NetMageSCW 5mo ago
Walgreens let’s you add your loyalty card and use both it and payment from Wallet.
rootusrootus 5mo ago
> my physical card Sure, if you carry the physical card. But that's exactly what I get from having it on the phone -- I don't want an inch-thick wallet from times of old, I want to carry as little as possible. I have a tiny magsafe wallet with ID, one physical credit card, and an airtag card. Everything else lives on the phone.

nottorp 5mo ago

I paid 0.99 for some 3rd party app to do that for me years ago. It still seems to work. And I'll still need it because I doubt I'll be switching to 26 or 27 any time soon. Edit: Pass2UWallet is the name of the app I'm using if anyone cares. I'm not getting a commission for that yadda yadda doo.

darkwater 5mo ago
TFA is from a developer that created an app to create passes in iOS (and Android)
- nottorp 5mo ago
  Not the only app though :)

jonathanstrange 5mo ago

What is a "pass" in that context?

sebtron 5mo ago
I think it means a digital copy of a ticket or similar card.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]

skiing_crawling 5mo ago

they do the most obvious, sorely missing feature after over a decade of stubbornness and it goes straight to the top of HN

cormorant 5mo ago

Who's to say the business that issued the ticket will accept your homemade imitation? with "adjustable styles, images, colors, and text fields"?

46493168 5mo ago
Absolutely no one whose job it is to scan barcodes gets paid enough to give a single fuck about how that barcode was created
- knollimar 5mo ago
  There's some places like railroads that I've seen care about this so that people don't share tickets (like monthly pass types)
ceejayoz 5mo ago
I use Pass4Wallet for several loyalty/gym memberships. In my experience, if the code scans, the code scans.
circuit10 5mo ago
It works fine if scanned by a machine though (ticket gate, self checkout etc.) I've used a third party app for this for a UK weekly pass train ticket you could only buy physically, but if you buy it on a train rather than at a station they can't print you a ticket with a magnetic strip and they have to give you one with a barcode (technically an Aztec code), which you can then scan onto your phone and use at the gate. But I kept the original ticket with me too and would use that if a person asked to inspect it

maratc 5mo ago

Adding your own passes was possible before (I used websites to create passes on the phone; apps existed too) however that's been a hurdle. I wonder what the security implications of this would be. Could people snatch a QR code on my paper ticket to go to a Taylor Swift's concert instead of me?

jjice 5mo ago
I can't speak for all things, but I found that venues will often use like a rotating QR code or rely on NFC. I'm sure if this is something like a ticket for a concert, you'll just rely on the existing pass support from whatever service you're using because it'll require something more complex. The way I'm interpreting this is that it's a way to abstract stagnant QR or barcode passes for smaller businesses and libraries. We'll see at the WWDC though.
mystifyingpoi 5mo ago
> Could people snatch a QR code on my paper ticket That's a feature, not a bug. It means you can sell the ticket if you can't make it. Thankfully (/s) we have Ticketmaster with rolling codes now, so, no reselling.
- maratc 5mo ago
  > It means you can sell the ticket This also means I can do it twice if I choose so.
NetMageSCW 5mo ago
How do they get your paper ticket?
- maratc 5mo ago
  By using their smart glasses or 20x zoom camera to take a picture of it when I take it out of the pocket at a grocery line? Thieves could snatch my paper ticket from my hands before, but at least in that situation I would be aware of it.

sen 5mo ago

Now we just need the ability to add custom NFC/RFID passes in the Wallet app for workplace doors/lifts/etc.

alehlopeh 5mo ago
Accessgrid is a startup in this space.
rootusrootus 5mo ago
I would love to see that. No more forgetting the office RFID card
pjc50 5mo ago
"Clone this pass" as a service!
thecatapps 5mo ago
God I hope that's included. As silly as it sounds, having NFC inside passes require a custom entitlement/approval from Apple was my breaking point for ditching iOS development altogether. The form for requesting said entitlement was broken (at the time, at least), and I didn't understand why .pkpass files had to be signed at all - I still don't.
- daheat 5mo ago
  Same here - Why are they gating the NFC? There could be a sprawling ecosystem, instead they stifle it !

jstanley 5mo ago

What is a "pass"?

brad0 5mo ago
A generic name for a collection of things used to gain access to something. That’s not really helping explain it, so here’s some examples: Airplane tickets, library membership barcode, sports tickets, loyalty cards for your local coffee shop, conference tickets, etc. Essentially anything with a barcode first and foremost. The website that this blog is about allows you to generate your own passes.
- sebtron 5mo ago
  Can I use this feature to generate an airplane ticket? :P I think "create" is the confusing part. It should be "digitize" or something. Either this, or "pass" means something else here.
- jstanley 5mo ago
  I literally don't get what this new feature is adding or why it would be part of an iPhone wallet. If you want to issue tickets is your wallet the most obvious place to do it from? Why would an airline issue tickets from an iPhone? Or, if this is just for storing tickets issued by other people, why does it benefit from going into the wallet app?
  - toast0 5mo ago
    This is for storing tickets issued by other people. It's handy because it provides an organizational tool. Airplane tickets are in wallet, concert tickets are in wallet. Maybe ferry passes and store discount ids should be too. And also because you get better results from scanning a regenerated 2d/3d barcode after decoding the original vs scanning a photo of the original.

petetnt 5mo ago

The Wallet Pass[0] and PassKit[1] documentations are some of the sparsest and cryptic documentations around filled with absolutely archaic flows that _need_ to be supported for proper integration. If this solves the need of ever having to deal with those features ever again. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/passkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/passkit

Liquid_Fire 5mo ago

> A few places where we still help, even after iOS 27 ships: > Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form. What does this actually mean? Google Wallet has had a button to add your own passes for many years. How is the feature described here different?

tantalor 5mo ago
Yep. Lots of things are supported: https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/12060038 https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/12060038 Anything with a bar code or QR code will work. It's not complicated.
- baby 5mo ago
  I switched to Android for a year last year and moving back to iOS was really painful. A lot of things make so much more sense in Android. I really miss being able to manage notifications granularly directly from the notifications for example, or quickly copy/paste many previous things from my clipboard directly from the keyboard, but what I miss the most is the AI integration, using AI is so painful on iOS
  - _diyar 5mo ago
    What made you move back to iOS?
    - baby 5mo ago
      I have another list of issues with Android, but the killer was how good iOS battery and how good iPhones are as physical products. But I miss a lot of things on Android now too (like the folding screen)
  - adithyassekhar 5mo ago
    I made the mistake of switching to an iPhone 17 from an S24. The phone had a problem so I thought why not try the famous UX of iOS? I had issues but I found the solution. I barely look at notifications anymore, it’s useless, does not group by app, can’t take any actions from there. Even if you open the app, the notification remains, so it’s just clutter at this point. Clipboard does not exist. Chrome sometimes when opened, opens up the address bar and there is no close button, I need to navigate away from the page I was on, or refresh. So I switched to safari, good job google. The biggest annoyance would be the back button or rather the lack of it. Every app does it somewhere different. It could be a left swipe in some apps, a back button on top left, a tick box on top right. There is no mental model you can rely on. Then I realized I am using it wrong. iPhones were never made for people like you or me. We just wants to finish our work as soon as possible. We zoom through multiple apps and get things done. iOS is for toddlers/old people and technologically challenged crowd. We need to think like them. So I treat the notification shade just like other users, glance and ignore. No need to manage it or clear it. Clipboard are needed when you copy multiple things. That’s because you want to paste multiple things. You are trying to do too much at the same time. Think of the most “simplest” person you know, they wouldn’t do what you’re doing. So I stopped doing that. Back button was only an annoyance when I either used non-apple apps or do things fast. Again doing things fast is not what your simple friend would do. They would take time and each action, press, swipe would be deliberate, not careful yet confused. Basically stop trying to be a smart person while using an iPhone. You might be a wizard in front of a terminal. iOS is designed for a large and specific set of audience and I truly respect Apple for catering to them. Most corporations like Google or Microsoft will try to teach their users and make them something they are not. Apple accepts them as they are. This comment has a lot of grammar mistakes which I am frankly not going to fix. The apple keyboard is terrible to go in between words and sentences to edit them. But the target audience would never do it anyway and Apple proudly supports their decision by not improving the keyboard. I think that’s a noble thing to do.

resters 5mo ago

I thought this meant Apple was creating the ability for anyone to issue/sell passes/tickets through its wallet infrastructure. That would be much more significant.

kilian 5mo ago

The wallet app UI is the peak of Apple's 'single 20y/o in sf' design. Anyone that has multiple card from the same bank (because, say, you have a personal account and a shared account with your partner) has to do the "pick between the two identical looking top 20px of cards" dance every time they use Wallet to pay for something. It is mind-boggling that the current UI persists.

yieldcrv 5mo ago
long hold to re-arrange your rearrange what your default card is - but to the bottom of the stack - is dumb
- bombcar 5mo ago
  Apple has my location at every moment of my life, from birth to natural death, and they can't switch the default card based on the store I'm in? Will wonders never cease.
  - HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
    It works aggressively in Walgreen's
- red369 5mo ago
  This one seems harder to get right to me. The cards are stacked so that the card further down the screen is the top of the stack (the card overlap indicating which is in front of which). I would guess this was done because if you can only see part of the cards behind, seeing the top of the obscured card is more useful than seeing the bottom. I could be missing something, but where there is no perfect solution, I want to be slower to say the option they chose is dumb.
  - yieldcrv 5mo ago
    Appeal to authority fallacy

stavros 5mo ago

I feel like a broken record to be saying this again, but seeing Claude's writing everywhere grates. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but can we at least post articles that weren't so obviously Claude?

rafram 5mo ago

This is AI slop blogspam. Original article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-04/ios-27-features-apple-plans-to-let-users-build-their-own-passes-in-wallet-app https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-04/ios-27-fe...

HelloUsername 5mo ago
Perhaps comments can be moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48012532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48012532
xnorswap 5mo ago
You're getting downvoted, but it's unmistakably written by AI.

DrewADesign 5mo ago

While the author does mention the barriers to adoption, the premise— Apple was waiting for people to do something, but people weren’t doing it— subtly casts Apple as a passive entity in this scenario. The solution seems to be presented as Apple stepping in to make up for Developers’ inaction. If it’s been 14 years and there’s been very little adoption, this is clearly a UX problem. How many small venues or libraries have developers, let alone developers that do enough Apple-specific development work to have an Apple Developer account? In 14 years they couldn’t come up with an alternate solution? Maybe a less expensive administrative version of a developer account? It’s not users jobs to sell themselves on Apple’s products.

seeeeebt 5mo ago
Yes, what a bizarre framing! Surely it should read "It took 14 years for Apple to realise the problem was with them".
dec0dedab0de 5mo ago
What there really should be is a wallet equivalent of an ics file. It doesn't need to support everything, static images would be enough for most use cases. Advanced features could then require the current model. But that would require collaboration, and standards, which seem to have gone away as smart phones came in.
- azinman2 5mo ago
  Apple has .pkpass
  - sheept 5mo ago
    As alluded to in the ancestor comment, signing the .pkpass requires an Apple developer account.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lode 5mo ago

mihaaly 5mo ago

I think I'd be satisfied enough allowing me not to add credit card to the Apple Wallet, putting away the push from the prime place some way. Or not to have a huge promotion being in the first place when opening it with a 'Get' buttopn being the only one on it. Today's app makers do not respect users. See them as big milk-cow fan-base, that's it! So they can piss off, I don't care about them either!

latexr 5mo ago

Finally!¹ My biggest use case is not actually creating passes for services which don’t provide them, but being able to create passes without having to install a freaking app. FlixBus (I might be misremembering) is the only service I ever found which lets you pay with Apple Pay and add a pass to Wallet all from Safari. For airlines and other bus/train services I always have to install the app to do both. Maybe this will allow me to buy tickets on the web then make my own pass. ¹ Assuming I even update to iOS 27, though.

vtbassmatt 5mo ago
It feels wrong to say something nice about Ticketmaster, but you don't need their app to add concert tickets to Apple Wallet (at least at all the venues where I live). I strictly use their website because I don't trust them. I've never tried to pay with Apple Pay on ticketmaster.com, but I assume I could do that as well.

dec0dedab0de 5mo ago

This rules, I hope they don't botch it. All I need is the ability to save a custom image, maybe with an optional expiration date. Then I could add all my insurance cards and concert tickets that are not already compatible.

nunez 5mo ago

Damn; PassWallet just got Sherlocked.

alt227 5mo ago
Google wallet has done this from day one. If Apple had done the same these 3rd party apps would have never existed in the first place.

baby-yoda 5mo ago

Fingers crossed they'll finally add Code 39 barcode generation.

aczerepinski 5mo ago

As long as we're innovating, how about adding tap to pay to the physical apple cards?

WorldMaker 5mo ago
If you have an Apple Card they already assume that you have an iPhone to tap to pay with. Why pay for hardware in the card that duplicates hardware your phone already does better? (Better as in Phone tap to pay has an extra layer of security that card tap to pay does not. But also yes, cynically, better for Apple because Apple gets a small cut in Phone tap to pay to help pay for that extra layer of security.) Using an Apple Watch for tap to pay is really nice, for what it is worth.
- aczerepinski 5mo ago
  Handing your phone to the guy working the gate at the parking lot is awkward. Will he need to hand it back and forth for face ID? Handing a credit card like everyone else does is better, but why is this heavy titanium card one of the few that doesn’t work on his tap reader as expected? I wear a garmin when I work out but otherwise want a mechanical watch with no tracking or distractions.
  - WorldMaker 5mo ago
    In the modern world, the guy working the gate at the parking lot should be handing you the reader and not care what thing you are swiping, inserting, or waving at it. I think Europe gets it. America is slowly catching up. But if you have to pass a card because some business still feels that they have to touch your cards in this age, the EMV chip on the titanium card is just fine. They should just insert the card after a second or two of wondering why it doesn't tap. If their reader only takes tap to pay, then their reader needs to placed in a more convenient place for you to tap things like your phone or able to be passed to you for you to do what you need to do to pay. No one should be physically handling my payment method anymore but me. It's not a great service to walk 20 feet away from me with my credit card just to make a payment at some hard to reach terminal. In fact it's a security risk for skimming and card stealing (and always has been).

alt227 5mo ago

Good to see Apple catching up with Google finally. Google wallet has had the abillity to scan tickets and create custom passes for years. This article frames it like Apple are coming to save the day from lazy developers, but in reality its Apple who have been sleeping on this while other competing services have offered it for some time now.

halflife 5mo ago

Will this work only with scannable codes? Or with NFC as well?

noio 5mo ago

15 years ago, a friend of mine built an app to do this — "Pass Creator" — then Apple yanked the functionality. He paid me to create the icon for it, which was my first paid graphic design job: https://www.noio.nl/2012/10/pass-creator-app-icon/ https://www.noio.nl/2012/10/pass-creator-app-icon/ Thanks Paul.. good times!

Dependance 5mo ago
Went through your site, and amazed to see you worked on Kingdom ? Loved that game a ton.
AlOwain 5mo ago
If not for anything, the icon looks good. Although it is not out yet, Garbage Country's art direction looks good :) wishlisted.
hbn 5mo ago
You should know, however you're laying out the header on your website, in Safari it renders your face comically stretched and giant. Both on desktop and iPhone.
dwayne_dibley 5mo ago
I miss this design ascetic.

isodev 5mo ago

Oh great, Apple is sherlocking yet another category of apps (and not to mention Apple always had a convoluted and gatekeepy approach to letting passes show up in the Wallet app) I guess there is no appetite for “antitrust” in the US right now.

jjice 5mo ago
There are many anittrust arguments that can be taken up against Apple, but I don't see how this is one of them. They're adding a feature to add a QR/bar code to the wallet app. It's a very minor feature. As for sherlocking, this is such a minor use case that I'm not sure why anyone (minus maybe the initial app developers) would be upset. As a user, I need one less app to do something (that I should've been able to do for years). It's not like they're stripping an ability away from developers to hide it behind their own gates.

seldomcomment 5mo ago

This reminds me of WalletWallet [1], posted few months ago on HN [2]. [1] https://walletwallet.alen.ro/ https://walletwallet.alen.ro/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345745

jdhwosnhw 5mo ago
That’s because, as the article explicitly states, this post is by walletwallet’s developer
- seldomcomment 5mo ago
  can't believe I missed that...
avs733 5mo ago
Its a blog post from the WalletWallet team about the upcoming changes that have only been reported by Bloomberg news

dawnerd 5mo ago

And yet there's still credit cards that don't support Apple Wallet. Looking at you Citi Best Buy card...

ghaff 5mo ago

And literally (at least in the correct meaning of the term) I just spent 30 minutes trying to get a theater ticket into my wallet from my computer and was able to do so only after I switched to my phone. I'll make a printout anyway which would probably work if push came to shove in spite of what the email says. But I just don't love that you're fsckd if something happens to your phone. As I said in another message. I'll probably buy another phone sooner than I would have otherwise just so I have a reasonably contemporary packup.

odysseus 5mo ago

Apple needs to go a step beyond this and optionally automatically pick the best card to use based on your location to get the max cash back.

emsign 5mo ago

And thus the trap closes shut. Big money wants to control all your identities. This is basically it, it's the final stage. now all it takes is a government that stops obeying fundamental rights... oh wait!

testfoobar 5mo ago

Definitely need this - I have a grocery store app with an embedded QR code linked to my account for discounts at point of sale. Opening the app is slow - so I've screen shotted the QR code. I have to pull my pinned photos at checkout to scan the code. This is also slow - but less slow than opening the app. Looking forward to adding it to Apple wallet. As an aside, does the Jenny number still work at most stores?

janandonly 5mo ago

I am surprised nobody mentioned pass3wallet yet? https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423106610 https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423...

MagicMoonlight 5mo ago

Awesome, finally. I don’t know why they wait so long to add things.

jasonmp85 5mo ago

[dead]

divbzero 5mo ago

This is wonderful, I’ve been waiting for this to add a library card to Apple Wallet. I hope it will support linear barcodes too.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

nixpulvis 5mo ago

Imagine if they let us make and share apps too. The amount of creativity and innovation the App Store has stifled is surely enormous and downright sad.

auston 5mo ago

Built a version of this for companies that want to move keys to Apple Wallet: accessgrid.com

ornornor 5mo ago

Amazing Apple. Taking decades to release the most basic features that everyone has been asking for/missing ever since the underlying product came out. If they present that feature as “revolutionary”, I win the apple keynote bingo again.

imwillofficial 5mo ago

I really liked the obective tone and positive attitude of this article. Well worth the read.